It is quite common in the construction and utility industry to bury a variety of utility cables and lines underground during the construction phases of buildings, highways, and/or other structures. The various types and forms of new materials now permit the positioning of cables such as electrical cables, telephone cables and the like to be buried under the ground without the fear of deterioration from the elements. Hence, the linear volume of underground cables has increased dramatically over the last several years.
One of the problems incident to the positioning of electrical, telephone, and other such cables underground is the fact that often, repairs are necessary. Repairs may be necessitated due to the accidental severing of the cable during the construction phase of a given project, or alternatively, in some instances, a deterioration of the outer casing of the cable has been found to occur in which case, the damaged portion of the cable must be located and repaired. It will be appreciated that in order to find the damaged portion of any given utility cable underground in the first instance, it is usually necessary to do an extensive amount of excavating in order to unearth the cable. Once the damaged portion of the cable has been located, and the repairs have been effected, it is then customary to simply bury, once again, the cable such that above-ground structures may be re-layed. It will be appreciated, however, that often times, the repaired section of the cable will require subsequent repairs for the reason that when splices or other repairs are effected, the repaired portion of the cable is protected with, at best, a temporary casing such as tape or some other such material. Hence, the probability of further damage such as by the elements, or the like increases with respect to such repaired sections of the cable. It has therefore become necessary in the industry to mark such damaged and repaired sections of the cable with some form of locating means such that should additional repairs be necessitated, extensive excavating will not be necessitated a second time, but rather, a detector may be employed to re-locate the spliced or repaired section of the cable for subsequent repairs.
The most common procedure which has been adopted by the utility company is to support the spliced or repaired section of the cable on a wood plank to which a metallic object is attached such as by nailing or bolting the same to the plank. A metal detector may then be employed to locate the metallic element affixed to the wooden plank. Presently, this system is utilized especially in cases where a utility cable must be repaired by splicing and repairing and then re-taped. However, it has been found that wooden planks, even when creosolled, tend to deteriorate when positioned under the ground and in addition, any metallic rod or cable attached to the plank has been found to similarly deteriorate with time. Hence, subsequent re-location of the damaged or spliced section has been rendered difficult.